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CA Chant—Communicating Astronomy Heather RASC Podcasts image: www.nasa.gov/content/hubble -sees-a-smiling-len episode 2 (2018 February) C.A. Chant—communicating astronomy Heather: Hello everyone! Welcome to the second episode of the RASC 150 History Podcast, our series venturing into the known and unknown of the RASC's past. My name is Heather Laird, I am a Director of The Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, and my co-host is the RASC Archivist, Randall Rosenfeld. Ah, I see he is in need of some assistance in extricating himself from under a pile of RASC arcana [sound of a monumental pile of books and papers collapsing, discommoding several annoyed colonies of dust bunnies]. There we go... say hello, Randall! Randall: [some mumbled greeting, or other] Heather: Our first podcast was on the mid-Victorian beginnings of what in time became the RASC, and the work of our eight founders. For this second podcast, we focus on one person, Clarence Augustus Chant, who entered the life of the Society some two decades after the events recounted in the first episode. Chant was one of the significant shapers of the RASC, and, of astronomy in Canada. We survey some of his achievements and legacy, the positive and the not so positive, with an emphasis on Chant and the RASC, and we explore how he went about communicating astronomy. Footnote warning! The modern science of astronomy abounds with acronyms. The practice of communicating science to the public is now usually referred to as "Education and Public Outreach", which often appears as the acronym "EPO". Acronyms are hard to resist, aren't they, Randall? Randall: Reviewing Chant's practice of EPO affords us an opportunity to glance at the difficulties historians face in trying to understand a person in his place and time, when time has passed, the place has altered, and the person is no more. How do we go about experiencing someone's effectiveness as an astronomy popularizer, when all we have are the incomplete static remains of their dynamic presentations? We'll return to this problem near the end of the podcast. 1 Heather: In discussing Chant, an obvious place to start is with the public statements of others about his place in Canadian astronomy. Helen Hogg's obituary for Chant published in Science in 1957, is titled "C.A. Chant, Father of Canadian Astronomy". In it, she quotes from a letter she received from Harlow Shapley, then Director of the Harvard College Observatory, who wrote <quote>"No one can so rightly be adjudged the father of his country's astronomy and astronomers as Dr. Chant"<close quote>. Helen Hogg's slightly hyperbolic obituary is the first instance in print we could find of Chant being called the "father of Canadian astronomy". It's striking that six decades later the ASTROLab du parc national du Mont-Mégantic's web resource Canada under the stars uses nearly the same title for its entry: "Clarence Augustus Chant (1865-1956): The Father of Canadian astronomy". Randall: Not surprisingly, or perhaps fittingly, the honorific is used to describe Chant in several of the contributions to Astronomy in Canada: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow, a cooperative volume published by the Society in 1968 to mark both the centenary of Canada, and the centenary of the Society's roots. Ruth Northcott, a younger colleague of Chant's, stated in her piece <quote>: "The purpose of the present article is...to do something which Dr. Chant out of modesty could not do in his own article—emphasize the different ways in which he made such a massive contribution to the Society and to astronomy in general in Canada that he earned the title "Father of Canadian Astronomy""<close quote>. Heather: By 1988, when Richard Jarrell published what is now the standard history of Canadian astronomy, The Cold Light of Dawn, there was almost an expectation that the phrase would be used when Chant was discussed <quote>: While I am not enamoured of ‘great man’ theories of history, I am struck none-the-less with the pivotal roles played by J.S. Plaskett and by Clarence Augustus Chant, the latter of who established astronomy at the University of Toronto, and set up the David Dunlap Observatory. Chant has been called the ‘father of Canadian astronomy'" <close quote>. Randall: The famously caustic Copernican scholar Edward Rosen even used the honorific in an entry for Chant in his Annotated Copernicus Bibliography—an ironic honour of sorts. I for one can't read "C.A. Chant, Father of Canadian Astronomy" without thinking of the title bestowed on some Roman emperors, 2 pater patriae, "father of the country". The imperial allusion, intentional or not, will seem apt in light of some of Chant's actions. So, who was C.A. Chant? Heather: At a quick glance, it appears that the basic facts of his life and career are easily retrieved from the public record, in contrast to those of most of the people we discussed in the last podcast. What soon becomes apparent is that, while less obscure, available accounts of Chant's life often disagree in their details. He was born in semi-rural Ontario in 1865, to parents of English stock, and died in 1956, just before the inauguration of the space age during the International Geophysical Year. He went through an elementary education fairly typical for his time and place, and showed some proficiency for mathematics and classics. Upon graduation from high school he was accepted into the University of Toronto, but lacked the funds to attend. So he worked as a school teacher until he could afford to embark on a university education. He graduated from the university of Toronto in mathematics and physics in 1890, the year the Astronomical and Physical Society of Toronto became incorporated, but he wasn't to join the Society till several years had passed. The astronomy available at the University was minimal, and chiefly consisted of spherical trigonometry, and its applications. Upon graduation he worked in the office of the Auditor General in Ottawa. He returned several years latter to his alma mater to teach as a fellow in physics in 1891. Randall: He rose through the ranks of the University of Toronto, and in his early years of teaching was attracted to the fields of geometrical and physical optics. He took a leave of absence (from 1900-1901) to obtain his doctorate in physics from Harvard—a year seems a remarkably short time now! His thesis was on "An Experimental Investigation into the 'Skin' Effect in Electric Oscillators; with a Method of Determining Wave-Lengths". Weighing in at only thirty-six pages of text, it was the length of a medium-sized research paper today; how times have changed! His first remarkable achievement was convincing the University of Toronto to establishment a sub-department of Astrophysics within the Department of Physics. According to some accounts this happened in 1904, while other place it a decade later; whatever the correct date, the development was a first for Canada, as was his 1907 appointment as Associate Professor of Astrophysics. An 3 independent Department of Astronomy was created in 1918, but it only had a single faculty member until 1925—and that faculty member was none other than C.A. Chant! It remained the sole independent department of astronomy in Canada for many years, and certainly the largest. Heather: The importance of the creation of an undergrad program in astronomy, and a department of astronomy with professorships in the discipline, cannot be overemphasized for the development of professional astronomy in Canada. That the department in the early years was seriously understaffed, insufficiently funded, poorly equipped, and unproductive in research was beside the point. What mattered is that many of the most important figures in Canadian astronomy went through the undergrad program, starting in the 1920s. As Helen Hogg remarked in 1957 <quote>: "Over the years, most of the Canadian astronomers, including five of the Directors of the large Canadian observatories, were numbered among his pupils" <close quote>. The deficiencies in the Department were progressively remedied during the later 1930s, with the most intractable, namely the lack of suitable research facilities, being the last to be ameliorated. Chant managed that with the bold cooperation of Jessie Donalda Dunlap, in the creation of the David Dunlap Observatory. Randall: As for the RASC, Chant was responsible for three major developments, which still play a major role in the Society today. One was the re-launch of a periodical for the Society. There had been an annual publication consisting of research papers and reports since 1890. It had run into trouble around 1904. Chant oversaw the final issue of the old format, The Royal Astronomical Society of Canada Transactions for 1905, and its revamping and re-launch as the Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada in 1907. While it is not, and never has been one of the leading astrophysical journals, it remains the only Canadian astronomical periodical of record, and has been occasionally the vehicle for some significant work. Chant's second lasting development benefitting the RASC was the creation of the Observer's Handbook. It has become the leading English language yearly ephemeris for observers, and its publication has been nearly continuous since its introduction in 1907, the same year as the Journal. 4 Heather: Chant's third major innovation was an organizational one, which shapes the Society to this day. The creation of Centres was formalized under his Presidency in 1904. Today, most Society members belong to a RASC Centre, a regional node, somewhere in the country.
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